As we drove down the alleyway leading to Charlene's* mothers' condominium, I had some butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Was I butting into Charlene's family business and would she and her family end up resenting me? Would I be upsetting any routine or expectations that this 93 year old lady had? The primary reason for this visit was to access her mother's driving ability and if appropriate buy her a new car. At 93 years of age, it is truly amazing for her to have driven this many years. I was skeptical from the beginning, after all, how many 93 year olds do you know who are still driving? I calmed myself by remembering that after two years of Charlene talking to me about buying her mother a car and extending an invitation for me to join her on this trip, that I should try to be a blessing to this family. I prayed for God to use me in this situation to help and assist this family where needed. I prayed for God to mend the relational fractures that existed between mother and children, and most of all I prayed for God's guidance in determining if Martha* should still be driving at all!
Mark*, Charlene's brother, pulled his car (or rather the car he had borrowed) into Martha's driveway, parked it, and directed me through a tall wooden door which lead into a small, private outside garden. Then, just beyond a table and chair was his mother's front door. Martha, came to the door immediately. She was a sprite and courtly woman who insisted on taking me on a tour of her small home. It had a homey feeling to it. It was very neat and tidy. Was this the obsessive cleanliness that Charlene told me about over the years? To the left was the living room, to the right, a dining area and kitchen, and beyond that two bedrooms and baths. There were family photographs everywhere and I got to see adorable pictures of my friend Charlene as a child. I also saw Martha's perfectly organized craft closet and sewing area. This was the place where she had worked on the amazing and beautiful quilts which I now saw. Martha had been quite gifted at this traditional folk art and it had given her much comfort after the death of her husband. Now, she could not see well enough to do those small stitches, but still met regularly with her "quilting bee."
The talk turned to traditional family topics : updates on family members, health, travel, and finally to Martha's car. Martha drove an old, beaten-up Chevrolet. Whenever her son Mark used his mother's car, he thoughtlessly dropped food and beverage everywhere, making this car dirty as well as old. Mark had moved in with his mother following a nasty divorce, but ten years later, he had still never recovered financially, emotionally or spiritually. It is a shame really. In part one of this story, I hint at the intelligence manifested by Mark and his sister Charlene. Mark is one of the most intelligent people that I have met in a long time. That says a lot when you come from Westchester County, NY where people work very hard at manifesting all the right intellectual postures and honing any and all skills to laser-like precision. Mark could talk impressively in the topics of history, music, mathematics and science and, he was a walking dictionary. In my opinion, he was what used to be known as the "Renaissance Man," i.e. an intellectually well-rounded man. Martha told me her son stopped attending Church following his divorce. What was really holding back someone as gifted as Mark from achieving his full potential?
In the days that followed, it became very clear why I was down in Texas. It was not to visit all the musical venues associated with Austin, Texas nor was it to learn the two-step as Charlene had promised me. The first part of my purpose here was to assist Charlene in understanding and empathizing with the needs of her elderly mother. Charlene another gifted egghead had very unrealistic expectations of this trip and the needs of her mother. It was up to me to give her some basic information. Number one included assessing her mother's health. Charlene vaguely felt that her mother was experiencing some short-term memory loss. I told her that I noticed some hearing and sight problems as well. Should Martha be driving? Charlene and Mark needed to clear this with their mother's doctors and very importantly get in the car with their mother and give her a test drive. Next, I told Charlene that when you visit a 93 year old person, the focus needed to be on how you
could serve them. This might include home repairs, cooking, cleaning or driving them places that
they needed to go. Then one offers companionship and comfort. During these discussions she more
than once said how she wished her mother would just agree to enter an assisted living facility. Two
years ago, Charlene took her mother to tour several facilities and even carefully researched ways for
her mother to finance it. She was very cold in her search mission and seemingly insensitive to her mother's feelings about this. She brought those tours up several times in an effort to bully her mother even now, into entering such a facility.
Bullying seemed to be a defining attribute of this family. Never was it so clear as when I saw them all together. Was Martha the root of all this, as Charlene continually suggested, or was there another explanation? I am opting for another explanation. A variety of explanations kept playing in my mind as I tried to make sense of this family drama. I kept coming back to the same conclusion, which is that this family suffers with a variety of undiagnosed and untreated maladies, among them obsessive
compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder. Throughout my weeklong sojourn in Austin, I saw many behaviors linked to these conditions and began to add up the facts. It appeared to me that Charlene and her brother Mark labored under many compulsions and maladaptive behaviors which they seemed powerless to control. An interesting twist in this story, is that I did not see Martha exhibit any of the monsterous characteristics that Charlene and her brother had attributed to her. Instead, it was Charlene and Mark who manifested every cruelty. It was so bad at points that I thought it bordered on elder abuse and I told them so. I was compelled to step in many times to correct the situation. I found myself telling Charlene to be more patient, I asked her to lower her voice, and I urged everyone to calm down.
I am not saying that Charlene is wrong about her mother. I was not there throughout her life and many experiences. Perhaps Martha had mellowed with age. Perhaps she tempered her behavior when visitors were present. All that I can attest to was that during my visit to Texas, this 93 year old was by far, kinder and more emotionally stable than either of her children were. My observations also were that Charlene and Mark were NOW everything they accused their mother of being : intolerant, perfectionists, self-centered, controlling and moody. Besides mental challenges, the other
unspoken challenge that exists in this family is the gulf that exists between believers and non-believers in God. Do you have a family situation which seems impossible? It might be time to look at the whole thing from a fresh perspective. It might be time to consider new explanations as I did during my week in Austin. Sometimes, we are the problem. If so, let us have the courage to face this. Do we need counseling or treatment? Do we need to humbly confess our sins to the Lord? The Bible contains many stories of parent-child dilemmas. It is not a book of perfect people with perfect relationships. Just like Martha and her children, some of those biblical families consisted of parents
who believed in God and children who did not. There are parents who made serious mistakes in role modeling godly behavior. They had to suffer the consequences of those actions. But, we need to learn from these stories and try to avoid error in our life.
Charlene promised to go to Church with her mother and myself but ended up making excuses on Sunday morning and playing her flute instead. That morning, I had an amazing time at Martha's Bible Study. It was lead by an anointed and godly 86 year old woman, named Jenny*. After Bible Study, I arranged for Jenny, Martha and I to have a candid discussion about Martha and driving. This discussion, as well as the test drive that Martha took convinced me that she is still able to drive in a
limited capacity in Austin. Yes, you are safe Austin! The sermon at Church that day, which Charlene missed, focused on broken parent and child relationships. Charlene waltzed in to pick us up at the end of that sermon, which I know that God had intended for her family. Oh, Lord, I pray that those few words that she managed to hear touched Charlene in even the smallest way and that they would lead to growth and change.
We closed the deal on a used car the day before our flight back to Westchester, N.Y. Updates from Charlene indicate that her mother is adjusting to her new car and enjoys driving it. I had time to pray and read the Bible with Martha. We talked about many things of spiritual interest to Martha and there was the easy fellowship that believers have with one another. I promised her that if something
happened to her, that I would continue to pray for her children to come to know, or in the case of
Mark, to return to the Lord. This trip had a lot of emotionally challenges for me. I had to pray continually to meet the challenges of this family drama. I also could not have done it without the support of my Christian friends in New York. Yet, if we do not bring Jesus even into the darkest places, how will they know Him? There are times that God leads us into acts of service, to help our family, friends or even a stranger. Is God leading you today?
* real stories but the names and a few details are changed.
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